Mary Barton Page #51

Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life is the first novel by English author Elizabeth Gaskell, published in 1848. The story is set in the English city of Manchester between 1839 and 1842, and deals with the difficulties faced by the Victorian working class.

• Novel

								

and still to me, and the bonny earth seems dim and dark, and I
know it's my Father lulling me away to my long sleep. I'm very
well content, and yo mustn't fret for me. I've had well nigh every
blessing in life I could desire."

Mary thought of Alice's long-cherished, fond wish to revisit the home
of her childhood, so often and often deferred, and now probably never
to take place. Or if it did, how changed from the fond anticipation
of what it was to have been! It would be a mockery to the blind and
deaf Alice.

The evening came quickly to an end. There was the humble cheerful
meal, and then the bustling merry farewell, and Mary was once more in
the quietness and solitude of her own dingy, dreary-looking home; her
father still out, the fire extinguished, and her evening's task of
work lying all undone upon the dresser. But it had been a pleasant
little interlude to think upon. It had distracted her attention for
a few hours from the pressure of many uneasy thoughts, of the dark,
heavy, oppressive times, when sorrow and want seemed to surround her
on every side; of her father, his changed and altered looks, telling
so plainly of broken health, and an embittered heart; of the morrow,
and the morrow beyond that, to be spent in that close monotonous
work-room, with Sally Leadbitter's odious whispers hissing in her
ear; and of the hunted look, so full of dread, from Miss Simmonds'
door-step up and down the street, lest her persecuting lover should
be near: for he lay in wait for her with wonderful perseverance, and
of late had made himself almost hateful, by the unmanly force which
he had used to detain her to listen to him, and the indifference with
which he exposed her to the remarks of the passers-by, any one of
whom might circulate reports which it would be terrible for her
father to hear--and worse than death should they reach Jem Wilson.
And all this she had drawn upon herself by her giddy flirting. Oh!
how she loathed the recollection of the hot summer evening, when,
worn out by stitching and sewing, she had loitered homewards with
weary languor, and first listened to the voice of the tempter.

And Jem Wilson! Oh, Jem, Jem, why did you not come to receive some of
the modest looks and words of love which Mary longed to give you, to
try and make up for the hasty rejection which you as hastily took to
be final, though both mourned over it with many tears. But day after
day passed away, and patience seemed of no avail; and Mary's cry was
ever the old moan of the Moated Grange,

   "Why comes he not," she said,
   "I am aweary, aweary,
   I would that I were dead."




CHAPTER XIV.

JEM'S INTERVIEW WITH POOR ESTHER.


   "Know the temptation ere you judge the crime!
   Look on this tree--'twas green, and fair, and graceful;
   Yet now, save these few shoots, how dry and rotten!
   Thou canst not tell the cause. Not long ago,
   A neighbour oak, with which its roots were twined,
   In falling wrenched them with such cruel force,
   That though we covered them again with care,
   Its beauty withered, and it pined away.
   So, could we look into the human breast,
   How oft the fatal blight that meets our view,
   Should we trace down to the torn, bleeding fibres
   Of a too trusting heart--where it were shame,
   For pitying tears, to give contempt or blame."

   "STREET WALKS."


The month was over;--the honeymoon to the newly-married; the
exquisite convalescence to the "living mother of a living child;" the
"first dark days of nothingness" to the widow and the child bereaved;
the term of penance, of hard labour, and solitary confinement, to the
shrinking, shivering, hopeless prisoner.

"Sick, and in prison, and ye visited me." Shall you, or I, receive
such blessing? I know one who will. An overseer of a foundry, an aged
man, with hoary hair, has spent his Sabbaths, for many years, in
visiting the prisoners and the afflicted in Manchester New Bailey;
not merely advising and comforting, but putting means into their
power of regaining the virtue and the peace they had lost; becoming
himself their guarantee in obtaining employment, and never deserting
those who have once asked help from him. [43]


   [Footnote 43: Vide Manchester Guardian, of Wednesday, March 18,
                 1846; and also the Reports of Captain Williams,
                 prison inspector.]


Esther's term of imprisonment was ended. She received a good
character in the governor's books; she had picked her daily quantity
of oakum, had never deserved the extra punishment of the tread-mill,
and had been civil and decorous in her language. And once more she
was out of prison. The door closed behind her with a ponderous clang,
and in her desolation she felt as if shut out of home--from the only
shelter she could meet with, houseless and pennyless as she was, on
that dreary day.

But it was but for an instant that she stood there doubting. One
thought had haunted her both by night and by day, with monomaniacal
incessancy; and that thought was how to save Mary (her dead sister's
only child, her own little pet in the days of her innocence) from
following in the same downward path to vice. To whom could she speak
and ask for aid? She shrank from the idea of addressing John Barton
again; her heart sank within her, at the remembrance of his fierce
repulsing action, and far fiercer words. It seemed worse than death
to reveal her condition to Mary, else she sometimes thought that this
course would be the most terrible, the most efficient warning. She
must speak; to that she was soul-compelled; but to whom? She dreaded
addressing any of her former female acquaintance, even supposing they
had sense, or spirit, or interest enough to undertake her mission.

To whom shall the outcast prostitute tell her tale? Who will give her
help in her day of need? Hers is the leper-sin, and all stand aloof
dreading to be counted unclean.

In her wild night wanderings, she had noted the haunts and habits
of many a one who little thought of a watcher in the poor forsaken
woman. You may easily imagine that a double interest was attached
by her to the ways and companionships of those with whom she had
been acquainted in the days which, when present, she had considered
hardly-worked and monotonous, but which now in retrospection seemed
so happy and unclouded. Accordingly, she had, as we have seen, known
where to meet with John Barton on that unfortunate night, which had
only produced irritation in him, and a month's imprisonment to her.
She had also observed that he was still intimate with the Wilsons.
She had seen him walking and talking with both father and son; her
old friends too; and she had shed unregarded, unvalued tears, when
some one had casually told her of George Wilson's sudden death. It
now flashed across her mind, that to the son, to Mary's play-fellow,
her elder brother in the days of childhood, her tale might be told,
and listened to with interest, and some mode of action suggested by
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